Hi everyone! Today I'm going to introduce you to making noodles. Far from being an essential skill, I would say that it is more something fun you can do with a group of people. Noodle making takes a lot of time, and if you are buying eggs to make noodles, it's not necessarily a frugal activity.
I see noodle making kind of like cheese making. If you get a lot of free milk, cheese is a great way to preserve it. Similarily, making noodles is a good way to preserve a bunch of eggs. Last week I happened to have a bunch of eggs AND a sister to help me! We enjoyed accomplishing something together and getting a bunch of noodles at the end.
The other time noodle making makes sense financially is when you are making specialty noodles. Like specialty cheeses, specialty or gourmet noodles are worth making yourself. I've noticed that lasagna noodles tend to cost more than other pasta, so last week we decided to try making some lasagna noodles. It worked! Our noodles didn't have fancy frilled edges, but I always thought the frills were annoying to work around anyway.
I see noodle making kind of like cheese making. If you get a lot of free milk, cheese is a great way to preserve it. Similarily, making noodles is a good way to preserve a bunch of eggs. Last week I happened to have a bunch of eggs AND a sister to help me! We enjoyed accomplishing something together and getting a bunch of noodles at the end.
The other time noodle making makes sense financially is when you are making specialty noodles. Like specialty cheeses, specialty or gourmet noodles are worth making yourself. I've noticed that lasagna noodles tend to cost more than other pasta, so last week we decided to try making some lasagna noodles. It worked! Our noodles didn't have fancy frilled edges, but I always thought the frills were annoying to work around anyway.
AEgg Noodles
Ingredients:
Egg yolks
Flour (I just use a 25lb. bag of white flour from Walmart. It is the easiest to work with.)
Salt
Instructions:
Separate egg yolks and whites. Use as many eggs as you have. The whites can be saved and used to make angel food cake, merangue, or more healthier foods like omlets or gluten-free/paleo recipes that call for egg whites only. Add 1 pinch of salt per two egg yolks. I had several dozen egg yolks, so I just put a teaspoon of salt in.
Ingredients:
Egg yolks
Flour (I just use a 25lb. bag of white flour from Walmart. It is the easiest to work with.)
Salt
Instructions:
Separate egg yolks and whites. Use as many eggs as you have. The whites can be saved and used to make angel food cake, merangue, or more healthier foods like omlets or gluten-free/paleo recipes that call for egg whites only. Add 1 pinch of salt per two egg yolks. I had several dozen egg yolks, so I just put a teaspoon of salt in.
Stir flour into egg yolks. I just dump and stir, dump and stir. Soon the dough will be too thick to stir by hand, but too sticky to use for noodles. I refrigerated my sticky dough overnight to let the gluten develop.
The next step is the time-consuming part. Put a handful of flour on your working surface. Grab another handful of sticky dough and work the flour into it gradually by dipping in flour, folding, dipping in flour again and folding again. The purpose of this is to get the dough stiff enough to run through the noodle maker without having it stick all over. But you don't want it too stiff, otherwise you won't be able to get the sheet of dough thin enough to run through the machine. It's a fine line between too sticky and too stiff.
Working in the flour.
When you're done working flour into the lump, roll it into a log shape and flatten with your hands. This will make a "sheet" of dough to run through the rolling machine. Try to get it as flat as possible.
First time through the roller.
Using the roller setting on your noodle maker, run your sheet of dough through each setting, widest to narrowest, until you have a thin sheet. As the roller thins each sheet, they will become longer and have to be cut in half.
In between settings, you should flour the noodle sheet on each side. This prevents it from sticking to the roller. When we made noodles last week, my sister ran the roller on one side of the counter and I cut and floured noodle sheets on the other side of the counter. Instead of doing one sheet at a time from start to finish, we did 10 sheets at a time. Setting #1 for 10 sheets, cut and flour, #2 for the sheets, cut and flour, #3, etc.
In between settings, you should flour the noodle sheet on each side. This prevents it from sticking to the roller. When we made noodles last week, my sister ran the roller on one side of the counter and I cut and floured noodle sheets on the other side of the counter. Instead of doing one sheet at a time from start to finish, we did 10 sheets at a time. Setting #1 for 10 sheets, cut and flour, #2 for the sheets, cut and flour, #3, etc.
After the noodle sheets are as thin as possible (without tearing), it's time to run them through the cutter setting on your noodle maker. My noodle maker is a vintage hand-crank model made in Italy. It cuts angel hair-sized noodles and fettuccine noodles. You can also buy noodle attachments for Kitchen Aid mixers, but I chose a hand-crank machine because it allows you to run the roller backward if your dough starts to stick, AND you can better control the speed. I'm very happy with mine so far, though if I had to buy another one I would choose a wider one to do more noodles faster.
After the noodles have been cut, you can air dry them on noodle racks (a lot of work), or you can just dry them in well-distributed piles on a large flat surface. I cover our kitchen table and coffee table with old sheets to keep things clean. If the noodles are thin enough, I usually have my tables back within a day or so. :) I store the dried noodles in plastic twist-tie bags in the pantry.
Have you ever made noodles? Would you do it again?
Have you ever made noodles? Would you do it again?
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